The specialist: JLH Minor Restoration

By Jon Pressnell

| 22 Jul 2024

Classic & Sports Car – The specialist: JLH Minor Restoration

Some time ago, a prominent figure in the Morris Minor Owners’ Club announced that he was tempted to chop in his modern Mercedes-Benz estate for an uprated Traveller built by Warwickshire-based JLH Minor Restoration.

This idea didn’t raise as many eyebrows as you might expect.

Quite simply, a JLH Minor with Ford Zetec power is a thing of engineering beauty, with the finish to match.

These are not scrapyard specials.

Many Morris Minors require remedial work to bodged repairs before JLH Minor Restoration works its magic

Proprietor Jonathon Heap has now been in business for 30 years.

He trained as a book illustrator, worked for a while as a courier and then, following a three-year bodyshop apprenticeship, set up JLH in 1993 to rebuild and modify Morris Minors.

“I’ve always been practically minded,” he says. “When I started out, I would draw everything up.

“I then went to an engineer at Warwick university and asked him to produce working engineering drawings and spec the materials.”

An MGB GT project awaits attention

“I’ve always made sure that I surround myself with people who know stuff,” he continues, “and over the years I’ve learned a fair number of different disciplines myself.”

Although JLH is perhaps best known for its Zetec and K-series Minors, of which it has built about 50, these big projects are underpinned by the supply of suspension and braking upgrades for the Minor.

At the front, this can be a simple conversion to telescopic dampers or the more radical solution of discarding the Morris torsion bars in favour of coil-overs and tubular lower wishbones.

Clockwise from top: MG Midget with 250bhp Zetec engine and six-speed sequential Quaife gearbox in build; note the subtly flared wheelarches; suspension upgrades

At the rear, the options are moving to outboard turreted dampers, or going the whole hog and switching to four parallel links and a Panhard rod, again with coil-overs.

For the brakes, JLH offers Ford-derived vented front discs, with the option of a lightweight four-piston set-up.

On top of this, the cars can be given a Ford five-speed gearbox.

Assisted by body man Keith Jones, and welder and fitter Tom Butler, Jonathon usually has a handful of customer rebuilds and upgrades under way, and they only use parts from top-flight specialists such as Steve Foreman for Traveller woodwork.

JLH Minor Restoration does full restorations alongside suspension and engine upgrades

“I’m very picky with the wood,” Jonathon says. “I always make sure I have matched doors and matched sides.”

Morris Travellers are a particular challenge, because the steel bodywork needs to be in top condition before you start on the wood – and the cost of getting it to that stage can rarely be calculated with any accuracy.

“The only time you can give a reasonably reliable estimate is after you’ve done the steelwork,” explains Jonathon.

“When that’s done, you know how all of the wood will go back on.”

JLH Minor Restoration is known for its engine swaps, but A-series motors are catered for, too

For seven or so years, JLH has also been working on Healey Sprites and MG Midgets, and a fully upgraded, Zetec-powered Spridget was in the workshop when we visited.

The recipe at the front is tubular upper and lower arms, both adjustable, with rose-jointed anti-roll-bar links and JLH’s own billet-aluminium balljointed uprights.

At the rear, which has disc brakes, there is a narrowed Ford Escort axle with a Quaife diff, located by four radius arms and a Watt linkage, and it is sprung – as at the front – by turreted, long-travel coil-overs.

A restored Morris van body in the paint booth at JLH Minor Restoration

Jonathon does not pretend that JLH’s work is cheap.

“More and more people have chosen to bodge their Minors,” he says. “A lot of the cars have had cheap MoT repairs that we have to put right.

“People think that, because it’s a Morris Minor, it’s easy. But this is specialist work, especially if you modify them, and then it becomes more critical in terms of safety.

“I’ve always thought that if I do something, I want it right. That’s my principle – and it’s shared by Tom and Keith.

“That’s why, for instance, we zinc-spray between every panel. It’s the wired-in ethics of doing the job properly.”

Images: Jack Harrison